Study: Asthma rates linked with neighborhoods

People face lower asthma risk if they live in neighborhoods with more community vitality, specifically economic potential, community amenities and ethnic diversity, a new study has found.

This compares to higher asthma rates in neighborhoods where residents are less likely to move, and where there are more churches and not-for-profit facilities, according to the study published in the June issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

The two-year study, conducted by researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, focused on 287 Chicago neighborhoods, where nearly 50,000 children from kindergarten to middle school were screened for asthma.

Asthma is the leading chronic childhood illness, affecting more than 9 million children nationwide. Chicago has twice the national average asthma mortality rate.

"Previous studies showed that neighborhoods right next to each other with similar racial makeup had very different asthma rates; we wanted to see what else was going on in each neighborhood to cause such a disparity," said Ruchi Gupta, associate professor of pediatrics at the school. "So we looked at specific factors in each neighborhood."

Ethnically diverse communities with greater potential for economic development that were civically engaged, meaning that there were high percentages of registered voters had low asthma rates while stable communities, defined as communities where residents were less likely to move, with more social interaction had higher asthma rates.

Although it is not entirely clear how these factors affect health outcomes, previous research has shown that asthma and other chronic illnesses of childhood are associated with poverty, which may explain why communities with low asthma rates had a greater capacity for economic growth.

Researchers suspect that the association between neighborhood stability and asthma may indicate that homes in which residents are less likely to move receive less frequent and thorough cleanings, leading to an accumulation of indoor pollutants known to trigger asthma. Similarly, the association of higher interaction potential and increased asthma may signify overcrowding, which also leads to increased indoor pollutants.

Besides community influence, other factors that affect the rate of childhood asthma include income and education, housing problems with sensitivities to cockroaches, dust mites, mice and rats, exposure to air pollution and individual factors. A collaboration of many factors may ultimately cause asthma, according to the study.

"With these insights, we are better equipped to develop more effective interventions to help reduce asthma in children living in urban environments," said Gupta.